Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Brother, Can You Spare a Yuan?

Article Synopsis: After Wisconsin went Republican in 2010 and attempted to correct their own state debt problems, Democrats who tried taking their quorum and going [to someone else’s] home but lost the battle anyway pouted and tried to win the war by forcing recall elections on the principle Republican legislators who interfered with Democrats’ pet profligate policies. It didn’t work quite the way the Democrats wanted it to: Republicans still control the legislature and have no hope to reverse the legislation any time soon.

Just in Case You Need to Hear it Another Way: What part of this is too difficult for Democrats to get into their skulls? It’s not like there isn’t room in their heads, since they would seem to be effectively brainless. Dig it folks: STOP SPENDING MONEY.

Going after the governor next isn’t going to help. The only thing that will help is admitting that government cannot spend its citizens into prosperity; it doesn’t work ... it’s never worked any of the times it’s been attempted. Stop trying to jiggle the knobs already. It’s an inherently flawed idea that the sooner it dies the better off everyone will be.

Conclusion: The writing is on the wall. Despite the great lengths to which certain ideologues are desperately clinging to their fantasies of money-growing orchards, it isn’t real. Reality trumps fantasy every time.

Headline: USPS Asks to Lay Off 120K

Article Synopsis: Lose 120,000 jobs, or drastically restructure the benefits for the entire postal workforce. USPS officials are begging Congress to change laws requiring government health coverage and federal pensions, and allowing it to use private health and pension benefits. Last year, the Postal Service lost $8.5billion – a drop in the leaking federal bucket – and last quarter it lost $2.2billion. They need to save money somehow.

Third Time’s the Charm?: Okay, so we have a Constitutionally-required government program pleading with the rest of the government to please, please, pretty-please release it from its statutory obligation to provide government health coverage – the same sort that Obamacare is going to provide for the rest of us sooner or later – because that coverage is ... get ready for it ... too expensive, and the rest of the government, not to mention scads of “fellow Americans”, are too dim to understand that the reason two-thirds of us were against Obamacare in the first place, is because of anything other than “Obama is black”.

Greece, Spain, Italy [et al] are going broke due in no small part to their own government-provided health care costs; France has capitulated and has quietly been replacing their Mommy system with private insurance, Britain has been “studying” it because they acknowledge that Mommy systems don’t work anywhere other than on paper; our GAO has recently said that the pre-Obamacare figures were complete fantasy, that the cost of Obamacare would be more or less equal to the cost of the private system it would replace [it’s only a matter of time before they’ll admit to the “gotcha!” and concede that the cost will be far greater]; and now a government operation which has had an Obamacare system for decades is on its hands and knees begging to get out of it as the financial burden it is.

USPS is also asking to get out from its legal obligation to provide the same sort of unsustainable government pension that, for example, Wisconsin [above] recently got out from under, and that Democrats in Wisconsin threw themselves to the ground in a fit about. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work.

Conclusion: A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. When the Pauls begin to outnumber the Peters, though, the Peters will soon become nonrobbable, either because they have long ago lost anything of value from years of being robbed, or because they have moved on to an environment where being Peter is not a punishable condition. Find a middle class in Venezuela after Chavez “won” the “election”. They’re either in Columbia or dead.

As of 2008, 47% of Americans with a job do not pay any federal income tax whatsoever – they are exempt. Forty-seven percent of Americans are Paul.

Headline: Dow Down 400 on French Bank Worry

Article Synopsis: Half the countries in Europe are in the same predicament we’re in here, and France owns quite a lot of the debt owed by Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Iceland, ... etc. If these countries go financially belly-up, France will be left holding the bag.

How Many Ways Do You Need to Hear It: It ain’t just us, folks. Governments cannot continue to spend money on programs for “social good” if it means that necessary functions go unfulfilled, or the nation’s citizens cannot comfortably afford it, or the government runs continual deficits into a pile of debt that would choke Bill Gates. That is a law of reality, and no amount of self-righteous boo-hooing, nor piously sniffing “Think of the children/old people/veterans/downtrodden” will ever change that.

No government is designed to turn a profit and it is unrealistic to expect any government to do so, but any government that fails to keep its debt low enough that its citizens can comfortably afford to pay it off at a moment’s notice is a government that is asking – veritably begging – to be dismantled brick by brick by its creditors and tossed into dusty history books. There’s a reason the Roman Empire fell to wandering gangs of German hooligans after 600 years of kicking their butts back into Germania: Rome could no longer afford to pay its army because they were too busy buying self-indulgence.

There’s a reason the Soviet Union no longer exists; it wasn’t merely socialist ideology that did them in. They could no longer afford socialism as it is inherently insolvent: it disincentivizes prosperity as “greed”, and promotes servility and sloth.

There’s a reason that China made an abrupt right-turn after the Soviet Union crumbled by relaxing government restrictions on privately-run businesses; they aren’t stupid, and they can read the writing on the wall even if it is Adam Smith’s greedy invisible hand holding the can of spray paint. No ideology is worth disintegrating over, and the ideologues would rather hold power than toe the line on the ideology. Maoist narcissism, like every other local brand of collectivist tripe, is self-destructive.

Conclusion: This isn’t going away until the world either devolves into the post-modern Dark Age long sought by environmental luddites where the survivors are left to squat naked in the mud stabbing at bugs with pointy sticks for dinner, or the dense brain-deads with their need for Mommy Government to provide them with everything finally get shouted down by those who understand that working for one’s own living is necessary if one actually wishes to live.